Insects parade an impressive diversity of morphologies, colours, and sizes.
One factor of their success are their exceptional locomotion abilities: they run, climb, carry loads, jump, fly or strike – all by fine-tuning mechanical and kinematic constraints. Understanding the mechanical constraints which govern the kinematics and dynamics observed during different locomotor tasks will not only extend our knowledge of insect locomotion but may ultimately also improve the operational fitness of six-legged robots deployed in demanding environments.
To address these challenges, we developed a variety of different setups like rotational platforms with exchangeable walking substrates or various insect treadmills to record the locomotion of our insects. We film them with multiple cameras and track points of interest using markerless pose estimation. By combining the different viewports, we can reconstruct the locomotion and analyse it in 3D using established workflows.
